


Where I Come From

by Writing_Like_Ill_Die



Series: I’ll Make A Junker Out Of You Yet [1]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Angela "Mercy" Ziegler-centric, Families of Choice, Family Bonding, Family Dynamics, Family Feels, Family Fluff, Flashbacks, Gen, Junkers - Freeform, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes Has ADHD, Maori Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Mental Health Issues, Mercy has a tragic backstory because fuck you jeff Kaplan, POV Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Protective Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Psychological Trauma, Trauma, Unconventional Families, Veterans, and because after all she’s been through it might as well be be a tragic backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-13 22:27:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28785684
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Writing_Like_Ill_Die/pseuds/Writing_Like_Ill_Die
Summary: After Overwatch falls, Angela stops watching the news unless absolutely necessary. It makes her depression and anxiety worse, not to even mention the PTSD. Seeing all these people that she can’t help is exhausting, and so distressing. And maybe she’s just tired of all the hoops and rules this world makes her jump through so she can help those people. Maybe after having her work stolen from her multiple times over, the good doctor has become somewhat cynical and world-weary. She doesn’t want to know what Talon is doing now that Overwatch is gone, or doesn’t want to see that McCree is still a wanted criminal. (Though, sometimes she wonders if he had the right idea.) So no, she refuses to watch the news.And when she finds a blonde man with a peg leg, who is absolutely covered in soot, half dead near the relief camp she’s working in Mexico, she figures that he’s a survivor of the usual madness that has made a relief camp necessary. She’s not exactly wrong.Or: Angela adopts a rat. Or maybe the rat adopts her?Or Or: Does it count as a corruption arc if you’re pushed to it by the ‘good guys’ and the ‘villain’ is only a catalyst?
Relationships: Hammond & Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Hammond & Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes & Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes & Hammond, Junkrat | Jamison Fawkes & Roadhog | Mako Rutledge, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes & Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Reaper | Gabriel Reyes/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler (implied), Roadhog | Mako Rutledge & Angela "Mercy" Ziegler, Roadhog | Mako Rutledge/Angela "Mercy" Ziegler (implied)
Series: I’ll Make A Junker Out Of You Yet [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2110458
Comments: 2
Kudos: 21





	Where I Come From

**Author's Note:**

> Why does angela’s lore talk so much about her technology but not about her. This girl has no real personality in lore and game besides ‘nice’ even though she’s gone through so much
> 
> Tldr: Angela has more reason to join talon and fight against overwatch than all of the named talon operatives combined But I had a better idea

After Overwatch, Angela doesn’t watch the news. After Overwatch left her with more mental scars than she knew how to heal, she stopped watching the news unless it was an emergency. It made her depression and anxiety worse, not to mention her PTSD. It was all too distressing and depressing. And maybe she’s just tired of the hoops she has to jump through to heal people. Maybe after having her work stolen multiple times over, the good doctor has become somewhat cynical and world-weary. She tried, when Overwatch first fell, but she found herself having intense flashbacks, and it was only by virtue of the masked vigilante she was traveling with at the time, a woman named Persephone, that she was snapped out of them.

Persephone could understand her grief, not entirely but to a heavy extent. She was once a soldier herself, under an organization that left her for dead. It was only by the virtue of her husband, Hades, who Angela heard but never saw, that she survived. Persephone was the one who advised her to stop trying to keep up with it, for her own mental health. Who convinced Angela that her well-being was more important right now, that she couldn’t help anyone if she didn’t help herself. They’d parted ways peacefully a long time ago, simply traveling in different directions so they could help the world. She took her words to heart, though.

She didn’t want to hear about what Talon was doing now that overwatch was disbanded. She didn’t want to hear about all the people she couldn’t save. Doesn’t want to know how many of the people she once called her family have switched sides, or, arguably worse, had decided to follow in McCree’s footsteps and become criminal vigilantes. Didn’t want to know how many were taking the law into their own hands, and likely into the guns in which they held with those hands.

(And how calloused this world had made her, because she was starting to believe it might be a good idea.)

So no, she doesn’t watch the news. But she isn’t alone. She’s in Mexico, working in a relief camp, and there are other doctors. Doctors that do keep up with the news. Doctors that _can_ keep up with the news. So she leaves the communal tent when they turn on the shared portable holodevice to the news. She needs to take a walk, or perhaps to go back to her tent, which operated as her personal clinic, and try to prepare for the next day.

It’s surprisingly cool at night in Mexico, and the blowing of the wind relaxes her. If she closes her eyes she can almost imagine that she’s at the beach with her father, the sand under feet being that of the Italian shore, the wind being tropical and not that of a veritable desert. She can almost imagine that she’s still a prodigy little girl, with bright eyes and a bright mind, who thought everyone was worth saving, who thought she could trust in her colleagues. She can almost imagine her father, with his deep dark skin and platinum hair, who passed on the title of Mercy to her, who told her first and foremost that heroes never truly die.

She keeps walking. She still wants to believe that, too. She still wants to believe that heroes never truly die, even if her father is dead and buried, even though she’d been betrayed by the people she considered her family and not even gotten a single apology. She still wants to believe that heroes exist, and that they come in all forms.

And that’s when finds herself outside her tent, staring at the body of a man not far from it. And of course she rushes straight to him. He’s covered in soot, his clothes mostly destroyed but still leaving him decent, thank god. Through the ashes in his hair she can see a platinum blonde color. Through the soot on his body she sees malnourishment, and two prosthetics that are almost ruined. He’s holding something to his chest tightly, like it’s precious. Mostly importantly, though, she can see that he’s still breathing, his ribs visible as his chest rises and falls slowly. She doesn’t recognize him, because she doesn’t watch the news. To her, he just looks like a survivor of the madness of this world. So she uses her significant strength to drag him into her tent and get to work. She washes the soot off him, does diagnostics, and finds that he is indeed heavily malnourished and dehydrated, and even sports significant radiation damage. She gets him into her softest cot and hooked up to an IV drip, as well as putting him on anti-radiation fluid to try and flush it out of him. While doing this, she had taken off his destroyed prosthetics and stowed them nearby, wanting to ask permission before she did. She also finds that what he had gripped in his hands is USB cartridge, with ‘TREASURE’ scribbled on it in what looks like charcoal. She figures it would be an invasion of privacy to view it, so instead she sits it on her desk for when he wakes up. She can’t find any kinda of identification on him, unfortunately, and hoped when he woke up that he’d be able to tell her. For now, she goes to sleep in her own cot, keeping an ear out for her patient.

She wakes to him having a panic attack, trying to fight out of the cot even with the drip attached, and she’s forced to inject him with a very light sedative. It’s not enough to knock him out, but it does calm him down enough that she can situate him back in his bed, make sure he didn’t tear out the needle in his arm with his thrashing, and then try to talk to him.

“I’m very sorry I had to do that, sir, but you I needed you to calm down. Don’t worry, I won’t do anything bad to you. I’m a doctor.” She says in the calm, soothing voice she deserves for her jumpier patients, and for the ones she feels most sorry for.

The man stares at her for a minute, still sluggish from the sedative, and then says, with a voice so full of relief that it catches Angela off guard: “Oh thank fuckin’ god, it’s Angela Ziegler.”

She hasn’t heard her name said with so much relief and awe in years. Mostly, people would look at her as a part of the organization overwatch, who became so terribly corrupt, and look at her with disgust. Or they would see her as the doctor who had her research stolen by those awful corrupt overwatch thugs, and look at her with pity. Or, worst of all, they would see her as Doctor Samuel Ziegler’s daughter, as a failure of a successor. It was just another reason to be weary of people, and it surprised her when this poor soul was so relieved by just the sight of her.

“Ah... yes? That is me.” She is only able to say, bewildered.

This man is still very much under the affects of the drug, as he nods sloppily. “Yeah, you’re the overwatch lady!! Where I come from got abandoned by em when I was real little, but I headed all about how you insisted on a relief mission. ‘Long with some other people, I dun’ remember ‘um names though.”

Well, that narrowed it down some, though not completely. There were many places that got abandoned by overwatch, and she had insisted on relief missions for each one. It wasn’t easy to guess exactly where this man was from. He had an accent, but she certainly didn’t recognize it. He was somewhat pale, but that could easily be the effects of the radiation rather than any real indicator of nationality. Still, it warmed her heart to know she had touched the heart of at least one of the thousands she felt she failed by not being able to relieve them of their pain. She lets a small, sad smile cross her face.

“I’m sorry that I couldn’t help you sooner. It’s nice to meet you.” She says softly.

“Iz’alroight, I don’t blame ya none, ya did all ya could. Wait, where’s m’treasure?!” He was starting to panic again, but Angela gave him the cartridge quickly.

“Here. Don’t worry, I didn’t look in it. Though I might need some identification.” She tells him.

He looks at her, suspiciously, and then says “‘ts Hemi. Can’t tell ya surname. I got bad people after me.”

She nods, understanding that feeling very well. Mexico was a dangerous place. She didn’t blame him at all for not wanting to share when he barely knew her, even if did see her in a positive light. His eyes held the same distrust that she knew hers held. It made her more determined to heal this man, to help him, because she could so easily see herself in him. But eventually, he nodded, accepting her answer.

—

Hemi turned out to be more than decent company, especially once she convinced him to take some medicine for his paranoia and anxiety. Coincidentally, it was the same prescription she used, half because she thought it would work well for his issues, and partly because he wouldn’t take it until he saw her take it, fearing that she would poison him otherwise. It made her sad, but yet more determined. But he was getting better, improving at a good pace. The anti-radiation treatment was doing wonders for his psyche, and was clearing up his skin, turning it from it’s strange pale color into something more suited to a man who spent a lot of time in the sun, though he was still undeniably a white man, or at least mixed race. His hair was starting to grow back in too, sunshine blond in a way that reminded her of her own tresses.

His general appearance reminded him somewhat of herself. His personality did too, mostly in the fact that he was a genius, wise behind his years but terrible at articulating it. He couldn’t even read yet he’d proven that he had built his own prosthetics, and had repaired them with some metals scraps that the camp had accumulated. In fact, once she deemed him healthy enough to meet the other doctors, they were able to keep his anxious hands busy by having him repair damaged equipment, or just by giving him a crate of scrap and letting him have his fun.

He was amusing, with a cheesy but still good sense of humor, often commenting on people’s more frustrating actions to her with a call of ‘where I come from...’ Sometimes, he would even say it for normal things.

Half the time, Angela couldn’t tell if these statements were true or not. She certainly believed him when a rat got loose in their collections of tents and he had started making bear traps to catch them. “Where I come from, rats are some nasty fuckers. Sharp claws, teeth that can chew through bone, whip-like tails, and that’s not even getting into the diseases than can give you.” He had told her when she explained to him that no, rats around here do not come up to your knee in height, and they do not eat people while they sleep. He had pouted, still, when she lightly reprimanded him for making such dangerous traps. ‘Was just tryna keep Angie safe...’ He’d mumbled, and it was touching in an amusing way.

She teased him with it, replying to his comments with her own. “Where I come from, we don’t eat like the food is going to be snatched away.” She’d teased, and he’d scowl and fight off a smile, eating his meals a little slower. It was a very motherly thing, what she did, and everyone knew it. Every interaction with Jamison held some level of maternal fondness, and Angela herself knew it too.

Angela has grown very found of him, in this one and a half months. He was like a little kid, and Angela had always wanted to raise kids. Not to birth them herself, no, she had helped enough women through labor that she would much prefer to never endure it herself. No, she wanted to adopt, to give kids a home, the way that her father had. It didn’t help that he did look somewhat like her, enough that visitors and newcomers would mistake him for her son.

He was embarrassed the first few times people asked him if he was happy that his mom was also his doctor. So they had a long talk about it.

Hemi had been staying with them a month or two, and needed to stay a little bit longer, in order to assure he fully healed. Angela made it clear that she saw him as a son, and would very happily take care of him longer if he wanted, but also didn’t want to encroach on any mother figure he already had.

Hemi had then spilled his real life story. First, that he was an orphan. And that he’d been on his own from age five to age twenty. H didn’t even remember his mother. At 20, he met his two best friends, and they escaped their home with his Treasure, the USB that remained unopened by Angela.

The leader of their area didn’t want him to make what was on that USB public knowledge. She either wanted that knowledge for her own personal gain, or wanted it destroyed so no one could use it. So they were kicked out, and felt they had to leave. And at first they caused trouble in the world, became criminals to try and get back in their town, try to help the people there, because chaos was just what Junkers were used to. Between the three of them, they had a very vague idea of the outside world, all of them having been isolated away from it for a good chunk to all of their lives. They thought the world had gone to shit like theirs had, in the 22 or so years they spent separated from it. They didn’t quite understand that the rest of the world didn’t apply to Junker rules. But their grand plan didn’t work anyway.

So they didn’t know what to do. They were stuck without a way to help people, or so it seemed. Because they never wanted to help the whole world. They never wanted to really be heroes. They just wanted to help their community, even if it gave nothing in thanks.

She listened patiently to Hemi’s story, all the same, while thinking these thoughts. And then he revealed his real name. Jamison Fawkes.

Angela realized all at once what was was going on there. He was from Australia, where she had so vehemently demanded that they do a relief mission in, with Gabriel Reyes backing her just as passionately. They knew the story of Australia. Of businessmen who encroached on people already there, who had built an Omnium in a land that had barely recovered from the Omnic War. Of a brave militia who tried to make things wrong, and were ultimately blamed when the Omnium blew up and irradiated the country.

Angela could remember clearly that her world ended when she was 17, when was forced to succeed her father early, so much earlier than she wanted to, than she was supposed, because they needed a Mercy, and she was the only one left alive who knew how to wield the technology that she and her father worked on together.

Her world ended a second time when she realized that three people she considered her family had betrayed her trust and stolen her technology. Technology that was supposed to be a family secret. Technology that was her father’s and hers, and no one else’s. She didn’t agree with giving them it for a reason, and she knew now how they were reaping the consequences. It hurt her even more, stabbed deep and twisted like a serrated knife, to see the technology that she and her father invented used for selfish purposes, for purposes that would ultimately end in more harm than good because they did not understand how risky this technology was, and they did not care how dangerous it could be if misused. Everyday she hurt, thinking about how her information was stolen, and thinking about the monstrous side effects they were experiencing because of it.

She thought about how Ana’s healing bullets were all one dose, and could easily kill someone who wasn’t the right weight, or not provide enough healing to help those were over that weight. She wondered how many Ana had overdosed with that damned gun. Angela wondered if she knew. Wondered if she cared.

She thought about Jack Morrison and his ego, and his healing points, about how much he relied on them. She could only imagine the damage that overexposure could cause, knowing the symptoms well herself. Sometimes she wondered if he was still alive, still addicted to his own stolen nanos. Other times she wondered if he was dead, blinded by the addiction with bullets sealed inside him, because he never listened to her when she said not to use nanos to heal bullet wounds until the bullets were taken out.

She thought about Moira. About how she ruined Gabriel Reyes. And about how Gabriel Reyes probably blamed her. That one hurt the most, because she cared about Gabriel, so much.

Jamison touched her hand and it pulled her out of her flashbacks.

Angela’s world ended once when she was 17, and again when she was in her late twenties.

Jamison’s world ended a hundred times over for 15 years straight. His treasure was like her nanos, she was sure of it. And Jamison was a genius. He probably knew it, too.

“I do want you to be my mum, if you would even have me afte hearin’ is her... But I can’t stop doing what I have to do. I got to find some way to help. And I can’t leave Roadie and Wreckie behind.” He told her, serious, even though he shook in his anxiety, and Angela could so easily see herself, 17 years old and struck with the worst grief of her life, but refusing to stop what she was doing. Refusing to quit helping.

She wondered when she lost that fire. When she started allowing other people to stop her from healing the world. She wondered why. Then she hugged Jamison tight, tears streaming out of her eyes for the first time in years. “Silly boy...” She whispered, petting his full head of blonde hair affectionately. “Who said I was going to make you choose?”

His story, all these memories, it all reminded Angela of her father’s saying. That heroes never die. And it made her think to herself that maybe he didn’t mean it so literally. Maybe he didn’t mean that heroic people never died. Maybe he meant that the heroic spirit never died, that even from the worst places, heroes would still rise, in all kinds of forms. And maybe he meant that anyone can be a hero, no matter their past, or their mistakes, or their losses. That even in those who had turned, or those who were shunned, the hero in them would never die.

It was a nice thought. Especially when she applied it to a gruff old commander who took the time out of his day to argue for her ideas against a board of leaders, who cried and swore in Spanish over the fact that his organization might leave an entire country to rot.

Gabriel Reyes would have absolutely adored this kid.

—

The recall message came while she was preparing to leave this relief camp behind. She was leaving them peacefully of course, so no one suspected her later. To everyone else, it was just a mother and her son leaving with their friends. Mako Rutledge and Hammond has been staying with her for a month already, so she could get any serious problems fixed up while she still had access to this kind of equipment, and to make sure Jamison was ready to go.

They were both extremely relieved when she and Jamie were able to contact them and tell them that their Junkrat was still alive. They were both mostly pleasant, though she knew that it was mostly because they too knew of her doing her best to help Australia.

The ‘Junkers’, as they called themselves, were all rough around the edges. She was very familiar with Jamie’s brand of chaos, even if she had somewhat reigned it in with his anti-rads and the medicines she had prescribed him. The other two, not so much.

Hammond was... a giant hamster. When he first came around, it was in a very large mech, and she couldn’t see the tiny pilot, not to mention the robotic translator, so she figured that he was an Omnic. It would be incredibly on brand for Jamison to adopt a terrifying Omnic, wouldn’t it? But in fact, she found that he was from the moonbase, similar to Winston. Not only that, but the hamster was a veritable genius, just like Winston, who had built his own mech and translator. He was chipper and cheerful, and loved her just as fiercely as he loved Junkrat and Roadhog. He may not be able to speak, but he was not a simple creature. He deeply understood the trials and tribulations that Australia faced, and was able to use his own experiences from on the moonbase to sympathize with them.

He, in fact, was the one to teach Junkrat and Roadhog to read and type, as Roadhog hadn’t had any need for it in over a decade and had all but forgotten, and Jamie had never fully learned and didn’t retain any concrete memories of before the explosion. His mech was basically a supercomputer, and he was able to use it to let her view the contents of the Treasure.

It was very much a treasure. The information inside, discovered and then refined again and again by one Jamison Fawkes, could help so many people. The applications he had used it for were amazing, but this, the Treasure Formula, as they called it, could do so much more. And she was excited to discover what she could do with it.

Mako, on the other hand, was a ginormous man who usually wore a pig-like gas mask, and was a man of few words. But he was one of the leaders in the militia against the Omnium, and so he respected her heavily, one person forced into a movement that was meant to help others to another. Not to mention the heavy respect he held in knowing that she had tried so hard to help his country, both before and after the Omnium exploded.

He was eternally grateful to her for healing Jamison’s radiation and injuries, and was even more pleased with her when she was able to ease his terrible, irradiation-ruined lungs back to a more stable state. He knew most the story of overwatch, being a fair bit older than her and having seen it play out personally. All three of them were various forms of pissed when she told them about her technology being stolen, but none more than Roadhog. He didn’t reveal his face to her, and she respected that, but she could feel the rage emulating off him. It was as terrifying as it was sweet.

Angela found him to be a great source of comfort and assurance, sturdy and calm where Jamie couldn’t be. Too many times already in this month had she found herself yoinked out of her work and into his arms, because she was overworking herself and starting to panic. By the time the month neared its end, she was coming to him willing. There was something to be said about how comforting it was to be held by a man twice your size, as he hummed half forgotten Maori lullabies. Especially when Jamie and Hammond joined, the four of them making a cuddle pile on the floor.

(Embarrassingly, many of the visitors and newcomers in that month thought that Mako was her husband. She couldn’t tell how he reacted, his face always covered somehow, but she didn’t want to think too hard on it. It embarrassed her, flustered her in a way she hadn’t felt since she was a teenage girl, lovesick over male and female crushes alike.)

Roadhog was also excellent at costume design, which was an important part of junker culture, and was very helpful for their purposes.

After all, Angela was soon to become a ‘Junker’ herself. Though they were, rebranding, as it were. No longer were they chaos causing criminals, but chaos causing vigilantes. They would use the technologies they found to heal the world’s most wounded, and wreck the greedy corporations that caused and even extended those wounds. No one would be safe from them.

But as she picked up her personal device to check the time, she found the recall. The Angela that wanted approval, that wanted to submit, that didn’t want to cause unnecessary trouble, made her listen to it. But as the recall demanded them back, she was only geeked with unease. Things were getting foggy. She wasn’t in her tent anymore. She was 17, blood on her cheek after her first battle, as a giant man with a too wide grin welcomed her officially to Overwatch. She was 20, seeing the chaos and destruction and assuring herself that this was right, this was fine. She was twenty-something, three times watching her tech get stolen with no regard for the safety of the patients. She was twenty-something, watching the man she trusted most get stuck in a cycle of constant pain.

“...Angie!”

Someone was shaking her. She snapped out of it, and found Jamison in front of her, looking into her eyes worriedly. She wasn’t sure if she could speak. He understood, and took the device out of her hand, examining the recall video. Before he pressed play, he made a gesture, and Angela felt Roadhog pick her up and cradle her with one arm, pressing one of her ears to his chest, where his heart thumped steadily, and putting his remaining hand over her other ear. She couldn’t hear the recall anymore, and couldn’t see it, either. Hammond climbed up Mako and laid on her, letting her pet him as she let herself relax.

Once it was done, she was put down, into Roadhog’s lap. Jamison put the device away. “You ain’t planning on answering that, are ya, Angie?” Jamison asked, more serious.

She made a face, not sure of the answer herself, when he continued.

“Cause to me it sounds like a pretty little invitation for them to screw you over a fourth goddamn time.” He deadpanned.

Angela couldn’t help it. She burst out laughing. Jamie just had such a way of saying the most wise things so very crudely, and it cracked her up every time. This time, it helped her find her voice. “No, I’m not going to answer it. I can’t, anyway. I have a prior engagement that I simply can’t miss.” She joked, feeling light and silly in a way she hadn’t in a long time. Jamie whooped, Mako chuckled in his deep, warm way, and Hammond squealed. It was sweet. It made her feel like she had a family again.

—

The news clicked on, somewhere.

“...criminals Junkrat, Roadhog, and Wreaking Ball are at it again, after a hiatus. But this time, they’ve appeared to turn to vigilante work, and they are joined by a new accomplice. They’ve been reported to provide food and medical attention to poor communities everywhere, but especially those currently protesting companies such as Vishkar. However, their deeds are not all noble, as all four have now begun to exclusively terrorize, confuse, and generally cause chaos for wealthy corporations everywhere. Their newest accomplice is thought to be a female human, and seems to hold significant medical knowledge, as members of every community they visit seem to have been treated professionally, despite no access to professional treatment. The real mystery that remains is this: How do they heal these people so quickly, and where are they getting so much fresh food and water?”

On the screen flashes pictures of a woman in a tattered and burned labcoat, holding a silver staff with gloved hands. The lab coat has stitches all over in black. Her hair is platinum, possibly dyed, shaved on the sides, and worn in a ponytail, singed at the ends. Covering her mouth was a half-mask, pure white, customized to look like a dove’s beak. Over her eyes are lab goggles, but even through them you can see her angry blue eyes. Two utility belts hang on her hips, filled to the brim with all sorts of supplies. She’s wearing singed white cargo pants as well, the pockets stuffed with all sorts of things that can’t be identified. On her back are arching, bone-white, skeletal wings, which she uses to fly across the battlefield. Over her labcoat is stolen riot gear, black in color and weathered, the words identifying it as police gear painted over and instead marked with a single word in white: PHOENIX.

But Angela Ziegler wouldn’t know anything about it. After all, she doesn’t watch the news.

**Author's Note:**

> @Jeff Kaplan turn on your location I just wanna talk (hiding a baseball bat with nails in it behind my back)


End file.
